MediaTek shares soar on optimism over its 4G chip

By Lisa Wang / Staff reporter

Wed, Jul 10, 2013 - Page 13

MediaTek Inc’s (聯發科) shares yesterday surged to their highest level in more than two weeks amid investor optimism that the company would become the world’s second-biggest chip supplier for 4G mobile phones.

Hsinchu-based MediaTek is expected to ship its first batch of MT6290 chips that support long-term evolution (LTE) technology at the end of this year — a move that will help the nation’s biggest handset chip supplier break Qualcomm Inc’s dominance in the market, a Gartner Inc analyst said.

“There will be a reshuffle in the LTE market as some chipmakers said they are scheduled to ship their LTE chips either in the fourth quarter of this year or in the first half of next year,” Gartner research vice president Mark Hung (洪岑維) told a media briefing on Monday.

“Qualcomm will no longer be the only LTE chip supplier,” Hung said. “MediaTek will become the second-largest LTE chip supplier, after China Mobile (中國移動) launches its LTE services later this year.”

China Mobile, the world’s biggest telecom operator, plans to build 200,000 LTE base stations by the end of this year.

Other than MediaTek, Intel Corp, Broadcom Corp and Marvell Technology Group are expected to start shipping LTE chips to customers in the first half of next year, Hung said, adding that these companies have lagged behind Qualcomm in developing LTE chips by about one year.

In related news, the China subsidiary of DeNA Co, Japan’s largest social-game Web site operator, on Monday announced a partnership with MediaTek to promote mobile social games.

Through the partnership, DeNA China’s first with an upstream supplier in the mobile phone chain, the company hopes to optimize its products with the help of MediaTek’s mobile chips, DeNA China said in a statement.

DeNA’s Japanese-language Mobage service has nearly 50 million users in Japan, and its Chinese-language version has more than 20 million users in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, MediaTek said.